The World and Everything in It: December 30, 2024

PREROLL: Good morning! Just today and tomorrow remain in our Year End Giving Drive, we’re not there yet.

Of course we love last-minute drama as much as anybody, but we really, really need you. Please give today and save us the stress, and save a stamp by giving online at WNG.org/YearEndGift.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: the environmental movement’s weapon of choice.

VINES: What the public interest groups here do is … use … environmental impact statements to … kill development projects.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today the Monday Moneybeat. David Bahnsen is standing by and we’ll talk about the year that was, 2024, and look ahead to 2025.

Later, the WORLD History Book: former President Jimmy Carter died this weekend. We’ve got a remembrance.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, December 30th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

ROUGH: Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: Death of Jimmy Carter » America’s longest-living president, Jimmy Carter, has died.

The 39th president, who turned 100 nearly three months ago, passed away peacefully and surrounded by family in Plains, Georgia Sunday afternoon. That’s according to the humanitarian organization Jimmy Carter founded, The Carter Center.

Carter held the Oval Office for one term, from 1977 to 1981, before losing reelection. When asked in 2014 what he was most proud of, he said:

CARTER: I kept my country at peace during very difficult times when I was in the White House, and I helped promote peace between other countries that were potentially at war.

Upon learning of Carter’s passing, President Biden said the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian, and he lost a dear friend.

Much more on the former president’s life, faith, and career is coming up later in the program.

At least 4 killed in southern U.S. storms » A rare late-December outbreak of severe storms killed at least four people and left more than a dozen hurt in the southern U.S. this weekend.

There were 45 reports of tornado damage across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, though not all those reported tornadoes are confirmed.

Near Charlotte, North Carolina, a 70-year-old man died Sunday while driving. North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper D.J. Maffucci:

MAFFUCCI: You know, he’s driving about, probably about 40 miles an hour down the roadway and all of a sudden that tree falls and it falls direct- I don’t even think he saw it coming, and I’m almost 100 percent sure he died instantly.

The storms also knocked out power to tens of thousands of people across the Southeast, and caused more than 600 flight delays Sunday at Atlanta’s airport.

South Korea plane crash latest » A passenger jet burst into flames during a disastrous landing in Muan, South Korea Sunday, killing 179 people. There were only two survivors.

Video shows the plane’s landing gear did not deploy, as it skidded across the airstrip, overshot the runway, and slammed into a barrier at the airport, setting off an explosion.

Workers have recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the plane’s black box. Aviation safety analyst David Soucie says those will be key to figuring out just what went wrong.

SOUCIE: There’s so many different unanswered questions and yes, [the] flight data recorder will give us those answers.

The plane was arriving from Bangkok, and the pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before it overshot the runway.

Halifax plane experiences suspected landing gear issues » Air Canada suspects a landing gear issue is to blame for a rough landing on one of its express flights over the weekend.

The plane, arriving at Halifax International Airport Saturday, experienced trouble upon landing and never made it to the terminal. The crew and all 73 passengers off-loaded onto a bus and no one was hurt.

But one of the passengers recounted a harrowing experience to Canada’s CBC News.

VALENTINE: We heard a pretty loud what almost sounded like a crash sound as the wing of the plane started to skid along the pavement, along with what I presume was the engine. The plane shook quite a bit and we started seeing fire on the left side of the plane, and smoke started coming in the windows.

The flight was coming in from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and the incident temporarily shut down all flights at the airport. Canada’s transportation safety board is investigating.

Azerbaijan president says Russians shot down airliner » The sounds of mourners at a funeral service in Baku, Azerbaijan, honoring the pilots who died in last week’s plane crash in Kazakhstan. Now, Azerbaijan’s president says Russian fire caused that flight to go down.

The plane, en route from Azerbaijan to the Russian city of Grozny, went down Christmas Day in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.

Sunday, Azerbaijan’s president asserted he can say with complete clarity that the airliner was shot down by Russia, albeit unintentionally. He also criticized Moscow for trying to hush up the issue for days.

The Kremlin admits its air defense systems were firing in the area to deflect Ukrainian drone strikes. Russian leader Vladimir Putin called the crash a tragic incident but stopped short of publicly accepting responsibility, though Azerbaijan’s president says Putin did apologize to him over the weekend.

Trump changes mind on H-1B visas » President-elect Trump is changing his position on H-1B visas aimed at bringing skilled foreign workers to the U.S.

After criticizing such visas in his first term, he now tells The New York Post he supports them, siding with Elon Musk and others who say they help the tech industry find workers for critical but hard-to-fill jobs.

Some of Trump’s vocal supporters oppose the visas, saying they’re at odds with the president-elect’s “America First” vision.

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett supports Trump’s position, but says the U.S. needs to find ways to lessen potential H-1B visa security risks.

BURCHETT: As in the case with the Chinese, they leave family members behind, and the Communist Chinese know that. And they compromise them. They say, ‘Hey, you got an aunt or an uncle over here. They might just disappear. We just need a little bit of information.’ Time and time again, they’ve done that.

That’s Burchett talking to Fox News Live. Trump has not said whether he’ll pursue changes to the H-1B visa program when he takes office.

I'm Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: a federal environmental statute takes center stage at the Supreme Court. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: It’s Monday the 30th of December. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It.

Good morning. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

I think we’ve all seen aggressive environmental protests. The audio from CBS News. And don’t panic. Nobody’s honking at you.

PROTEST MONTAGE: Blocking traffic / throwing red powder on a case housing the U.S. Constitution / “We can still cause a little bit of a scene.” / “
What exactly are you guys doing tonight?” “We’re going to a fancy-schmancy gala that JD Vance is going to be speaking at.” / “JD Vance is a climate super villain!” / “
Get down!” / “Immediately, security guards, hands around the neck.” / “Their goal is media attention.” / Exxon lies and people die / You have sold our futures and you've gotten rich doing it. / “Not everybody loves us. You don’t need to be popular to be effective.”

Environmental activism happens in the streets and in the courts … and it’s in the courts where it may be the most effective.

Today on Legal Docket … one of the most powerful tools environmentalists use to get their way.

And how they do it is not the way you might expect. It’s not necessarily by way of the Clean Air Act to fight particulates we might breathe. Or the Clean Water Act to fight, say, river pollution. Or even siccing the Environmental Protection Agency on businesses.

VINES: Oh, boy. This is one of the odd federal environmental statutes that’s at play here—

ROUGH: Jim Vines is an attorney who specializes in environmental law.

VINES: —NEPA

NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. Never heard of it? Yeah, I hadn’t either.

The Supreme Court hasn’t had a major NEPA case in 20 years, but it is an environmentalist work-horse.

What it does is require federal agencies to prepare environmental impact statements. These statements go into enormous detail about the effects of proposed industry projects.

VINES: What the public interest groups here do is … use litigation on NEPA on environmental impact statements to slow down and delay and sometimes kill development projects.

And that’s what brings us to the Supreme Court today: an environmental case out of Utah.

EICHER: Seven counties in the eastern part of Utah want to lay down a modest amount of railroad track—88 miles isn’t much by the standards of the western U.S.

Environmentalists don’t so much object to the track as they do what the track will carry. It would transport crude oil from a remote mountain region to the national rail network.

Once connected, the crude oil would snake through Colorado and down to refineries in Texas and Louisiana, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

The project would bring prosperity to this rural area of Utah. Jobs, business, and revenue. It’s worth noting there are no freeways here. Trucks have to navigate dicey mountain passes, so currently, it’s quite dangerous to move oil over the roads.

Nevertheless some environmental groups want to stop the project…

ROUGH: …using their weapon of choice: the environmental impact statement.

For this particular project ,the statement was 36-hundred pages, including 20 appendices—seemingly weighing all the tradeoffs around the 88 miles of track.

The statement detailed major impacts like water contamination, and loss of habitation for the sage-grouse. And minor impacts like vehicle safety.

EICHER: The Surface Transportation Board was the agency that had to write it up, and it OK’d the project.

But one Colorado county and various environmental groups filed suit.

They complain the board didn’t go far enough. They say it studied only the 88 miles of track, and not the negative consequences hundreds of miles away in Colorado, nor over a thousand of miles away in the Gulf Coast.

ROUGH: Here’s where it might be a little hard to follow.

The environmentalists are not saying the study is defective for reaching the wrong conclusion on the environmental issues. Under NEPA, they can’t.

VINES: That's not a valid argument to make under NEPA. That would be an argument you would have to make under some other environmental statute.

Like the Clean Water Act or Clean Air Act.

NEPA is purely procedural: It directs how to conduct the environmental impact statement.

So all the board has to do is follow a proper process.

VINES: That's the thing about NEPA.  Let’s say you come up with an environmental impact statement that was terrible. It said the thing is going to ruin the whole surface of the earth. But the agency said we think the harms from that are outweighed by the benefit from granting the permit, that’s legitimate under NEPA.

So the key here is whether proper procedure was followed.

And the claim is that it wasn’t.

VINES: It considered environmental issues 1 through 10, but it should have also considered 11 through 20. And they didn't consider that. So, dear court, please make them go back and reconsider 11 through 20 and make them go through those hoops as well.

EICHER: At the Supreme Court, Paul Clement argued for proponents of the project. He said it would be wrong to demand a more comprehensive study.

He argued the environmental impacts in Colorado and the Gulf are within the wheelhouse of other agencies, and too far-flug for the project at hand.

The phrase he used was “remote in time and space.”

ROUGH: But Justice Elena Kagan wanted to know what that meant. She started with an inquiry about what’s within the project’s time and space.

I’ve compressed the exchange a bit, just to give a flavor of the back and forth.

KAGAN: Here's this 88 miles of line, and railroads are going to cross it and wildfires are going to start as a result. Is that within time and space?

CLEMENT: Totally.

KAGAN: The pollution that those trains are going to cause, that's also time and space, within the time and space that you have the trains running?

CLEMENT: Yeah, yeah, within the confines of those 88 miles.

 KAGAN: Are you saying that anything that falls outside these 88 miles is not their problem?

CLEMENT: I'm saying that anything that is outside that 88 miles and is in the jurisdiction of another agency is not something that should be fatal

In your mind’s eye imagine a compass to draw perfect circles of variable sizes. You may have used one in math class. Clement argued that the board was right to draw that 88-mile circle and limit the study to that.

Quick digression: Jim Vines and Paul Clement used to work at the same law firm back in the day. Vines says that Clement does a masterful job here. With almost every question from the justices, Clement returned to his “time and space” proposition.

CLEMENT: If the effect is already remote in time and space … if it’s remote in time and space, and it’s in another agency’s jurisdiction, I think is the right test. … What I’m trying to do with remote in time and space …  You can’t be reversed as the agency for something that is remote in time and space, plus in another agency’s bailiwick. … If it’s remote and time and space, and in the jurisdiction of another agency …  If it’s in the jurisdiction of another agency and remote. …  But if it’s remote and time and space…

EICHER: The other side does have the language of the law in their favor. The regulations under the statute require the environmental study to take into account what is—in the language of those regulations— “reasonably foreseeable.”

William Jay argued for the environmental groups, and relied on that terminology to defend their position that the compass circle needs to be way bigger.

JAY: Reasonable foreseeability is the test that Congress—that has been in NEPA since the beginning and that Congress has recently reaffirmed

But if Clement was running into trouble making the circle too small, Jay ran into the problem of making it too big.

Here’s Justice Clarence Thomas:

THOMAS: Would you just articulate what you think the close connection is with the Gulf coast communities.

JAY: The whole raison d’etre of this project is to transport one commodity and one commodity only. … But I do think it's a little bit misleading for Mr. Clement to suggest this is an 88-mile railroad, as if the train just went back and forth for 88 miles. It's a connection to the National Rail Network.

ROUGH: Let’s go back to the legal term “foreseeable.” It’s foreseeable the project will have impacts beyond 88 miles.

But a word like that is easily conflated. It can come to be understood as “conceivable.”

Much more inclusive.

For example, a rail project in Utah could conceivably increase refinery work in Texas, and that could conceivably give asthma to someone in Port Arthur, where does it end?

EICHER: But the key to this case might be something that came up earlier. The new tracks aren’t the real concern … the cargo is. Crude oil and the environmental consequences of refining it.

But as we’ve discussed, the board can’t veto the project simply because it doesn’t like the environmental harms of oil refining. And the public citizen groups can’t stop it for that reason either.

The NEPA statute doesn’t allow it.

KAGAN: Do you think that the agency can turn down the project on that basis?

JAY: That's not a NEPA question obviously.

KAGAN: It seems related to a NEPA question, because if the agency can't mitigate the harm and it can't turn down the entire project, one wonders what all this fuss and bother is about?

ROUGH: Fuss and bother.

Environmental lawyer Jim Vines suspects that’s what this case is actually about!

NEPA is the most litigated environmental statute, and there’s general agreement that it’s abused by people who oppose development. A typical environmental impact statement can take two to five years to write.

VINES: There have been instances when it’s taken 15 to get through the EIS process along with the subsequent litigation. So investors who are investing money, that’s a real obstacle to them. … And the longer you can make that fuss and bother go on procedurally, the more you are likely to kill the project because investors will back out.

Clement reminded the justices that a group of investors are a party to this case, too.

CLEMENT: So to be clear, I’m here in front of you on behalf of the seven counties that want this project to move forward and an investment group that got streamlined approval for this track in 2021. … My clients have to invest money. And they need predictability … a little more assurance that they're not going to get hung up for years and years based on litigation

Vines says Justice Kagan’s comment one wonders what all this fuss and bother is about is insightful regardless of her reason for bringing it up.

VINES: Justice Kagan—I can't tell whether she's being ironic about that, or whether she's admitting the strategy for that point of view, she's basically putting into plain language their ulterior motive.

EICHER: It’s worth mentioning that courts are supposed to give agencies deference to their process and reforms are in the works to set a 150-page limit on environmental impact statements.

ROUGH: It’s also worth mentioning, Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler argued for the government, who also supports the project. And Justice Neil Gorsuch had to recuse.

So we’ll see what sort of constraint the court sets here. The circle needs to be drawn somewhere. Perhaps a circle larger than just the 88 miles, but one that puts down harder limits to prevent these neverending environmental impact statements.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It, the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Well, good morning, Nick. Good to be with you.

EICHER: Last Monday of 2024, David, so let’s do an economic year-in-review. The former president, now president-elect, won a campaign in part on criticism of the economic stewardship of President Biden, with Kamala Harris trying to run from that record. But 2024, at least, was a pretty decent economy, as measured by the traditional measures, and as we talked about each week. Walk us through the year in review.

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that the economic stories we talked about here on The World and Everything in It throughout the year are the sort of major categories one thinks about when evaluating the economy.

The jobs market holding in there when there were times when people wondered whether maybe unemployment was about to kick higher. Or the impact of two years of Fed tightening was going to weaken the labor market.

But seeing wages grow, including at the bottom deciles of wage earners. Seeing weekly unemployment claims never really get that much higher. The unemployment rate staying right around 4%, which has traditionally been considered full employment. That’s probably the strongest story in the economy for the year.

There are definitely signs of weakening components, and we’ve talked about manufacturing. For all the talk of the investment that’s been made, we think about things like the Chips Act, that badly named Inflation Reduction Act. You know, one can believe—as I do—that there were tremendous problems with some of these legislative acts passed in the Biden administration. But even if you don’t believe it should have been done, or that it was wrongly done, you still generally would expect that there’s going to be some impact from these things. There was, but not nearly at the level that many had predicted. So, will there be some sort of economic improvement in manufacturing, in industrial production, in capital expenditures that drive enhanced productivity?

I think right now the economy is largely relying on enhanced productivity from just the greater technological efficiencies that are happening. That’s the way I prefer it. I don’t believe the government needs to be driving more productivity. I think they need to get out of the way of improved productivity. But regardless, the economy had a pretty good year

There are signs of weakness, and I’m still answering your question in the context of this one year, not addressing the underlying structural issues that are much more important longer term. Which is that in a year of economic expansion and peacetime we are still growing our deficits by $1-to-$2 trillion a year. That’s the fundamental issue, and that needs to be said about 2024 as well. It was absolutely extravagant government spending.

EICHER: How about 2024 in the markets?

BAHNSEN: Well, look, it was a huge year for markets and you’re looking at an impressive performance from a number of sectors besides technology.

Now we already know that technology had another very good year—and that those large names at the top in terms of market capitalization, Nvidia, Apple, Facebook, have continued to ride higher. But it was not a year where technology carried the whole market. The financial sector had a very good year. The utility sector had a very good year. 


So, there was a little bit more broadening out from a sector standpoint, and yet it was still very top heavy in terms of the companies that had big years.

Most risk assets did well in 2024, and then where there were lagging performances in safe assets, things like treasury bonds once again didn’t have a great year. So, we enter 2025 in a very different environment.

EICHER: And then last, David, I know you’re researching for your annual white-paper looking at the year ahead, but give us a little preview of what you expect we’ll be following in 2025.

BAHNSEN: Well, I would divide it up into the categories of trade, taxes, and energy. Deregulation is something that’s going to be a part of trade, taxes, and energy.

In the case of trade, there’s a risk of there being more regulation, not deregulation. Of course, there’s many who voted for President Trump who want that, and so I’ll give that where it is.

The struggle to get a continuing resolution passed do indeed foreshadow that nothing is going to go as easy for Trump 2.0, as many were hoping. I think that was true before the continuing-resolution challenges, but it kind of revealed it now.

But, Nick, here’s something that must be talked about. It broke out over Christmas Day and into the days that followed: a really significant divide within the camp of those who are most enthusiastic for Trump 2.0 around this issue of immigration visas related to workers in the United States, foreign workers in particular. 


The Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk camp that are running his Department of Governmental Efficiency, who were high-profile people—and in the case of Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in world history—taking the stance of that we need more foreign workers of high skills, for the sake of American competitiveness to retain their talents here.

Then on the other side, you have people that are more traditionally associated with online MAGA and kind of behind-the-scenes provocateurs. President Trump is going to have a lot of opportunity to have to pick between competing factions within MAGA.

I’m not talking about picking between left, right and moderate, which all presidents have to do. I’m talking about within his own camp. Some are arguing, and I’m not sure I disagree, that this is healthy, that you want good discourse and debate and disagreement.

But I think this foreshadows that even with taxes, even with some of the regulatory aspects, there is not uniform agreement on how we get to some of this America First agenda.

So, that’s what I’m expecting in 2025: that a lot of the simplicity people are hoping for is going to be revealed to be impossible and there’s going to be more complexity. But see, complexity doesn’t mean stuff can’t get done or that there won’t be improvement. There is debate as to what improvement will mean. When it comes to things like tax reform, guys like myself and Larry Kudlow, Steve Moore, and Steve Forbes, we have our beliefs as to what improvement means. Others have different beliefs as to what it means.

President Trump has a big agenda in front of him. Economically, he has to prioritize the things he ran on. Presidents generally can’t get elected talking about three big things and then make their big priority a fourth or fifth thing that wasn’t front and center in the campaign. I think it’s going to be bumpy.

I do now believe, unfortunately, that it looks like the tax issues are going to get pushed later into the year. I believe that would have been the biggest lay-up to start the year with—achieve a political victory, a policy victory, and then from that platform go do some of the other things you want to do with trade and energy.

But that’s what I’m expecting going in the new year. I’m writing my annual paper laying out a lot of this as it applies to markets and the economy, and that’s what we’ll have ready for everybody in into the beginning of January.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. David’s Dividend Café is available to you for free at dividendcafe.com. And if you sign up for that, or you already have, you can expect that white paper around January 10th , the second Friday of January. So be looking for that. Happy writing, David, and happy new year!

BAHNSEN: Happy new year, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming next on The World and Everything in It, as you heard a moment ago, America’s 39th president has died. Jimmy Carter was 100 and he died yesterday at his home in Plains, Georgia  a little more than 13 months after his wife Rosalynn. WORLD’s Lindsay Mast has this remembrance of the former president.

LINDSAY MAST: James Earl Carter Jr. was born near the tiny south Georgia town of Plains in October 1924. His father was a businessman, his mother a nurse. The ambitious younger Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and married Rosalynn Smith the same year.

Carter worked on the Navy’s first nuclear-powered submarines. But he retired and moved home to Plains in the 1950s after his father died.

Carter served on the local school board and in the state senate before he was elected Georgia’s governor in 1970. His first words as governor dealt with discrimination. They took many of his supporters by surprise and set the stage for his rise to national prominence. Audio here from his gubernatorial inaugural speech.

CARTER GOVERNOR INAUGURATION: At the end of a long campaign, I believe I know our people of this state, as well as anyone could. Based on this knowledge I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over.

Carter gained a national reputation for his views on race in the Deep South. Still, he was a long shot candidate in the 1976 race against then-President Gerald Ford.

Carter boldly professed his Christian faith on the campaign trail, but held strict views about the separation of church and state. He helped bring the term “born again” into the common vernacular when he used the term to refer to himself. Carter spoke of his faith during his inauguration.

CARTER PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION: And I have just taken the oath of office, on the Bible my mother gave me just a few years ago, opened to a timeless admonition from the ancient prophet, Micah. He has showed you, oh man what is good. And what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly, with our God.

In both domestic and foreign policy, Carter prioritized human rights. He appointed record numbers of minorities to government jobs. He also established the U-S Departments of Energy and Education.

A hallmark of his presidency came in 1978. He brokered a peace treaty between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

CAMP DAVID SIGNING: One of the documents they are signing tonight is entitled “A framework for peace in the Middle East.” *applause*

More than four decades on, the Camp David Accords still stand.

Despite that success, domestic issues like inflation, rising fuel prices, and a recession all took a toll on Carter’s political career.

Audio here during a period of gas rationing, from WPIX.

WPIX GAS PRICES: This is unreal! Isn’t this disgusting? Why isn’t anybody contacting the president, why is he letting this happen to us?

His final year in office was largely dominated by the Iranian hostage crisis. After the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power, Carter allowed Iran’s overthrown shah into the U.S. In November 1979, student militants took more than 50 Americans hostage from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Carter green-lit a rescue attempt in which eight American military members died. His popularity plunged. He ultimately negotiated a release, but it didn’t come in time to help him retain the presidency.

He lost the 1980 election. Iran freed the hostages the day he left office in 1981.

HOSTAGES RELEASED: The new president had not been in office an hour when the former hostages became free men and women again.

The Carters moved home to Plains, Georgia. They sold the family peanut farm and began writing. Carter’s body of work includes more than thirty books including memoirs, fiction, and collections of writings on his faith.

Carter’s beliefs did not always align with Christian orthodoxy. He did not believe the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy and supported female clergy. He renounced his affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention—twice. In his later life, Carter also voiced his increased acceptance of the practice of homosexuality.

But he continued to tell people about the gospel. He regularly taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. Audio here from the last class he taught, in 2019, shortly after he turned 95.

CARTER: I have confidence that there is a God and He's all powerful that he keeps his promises and he promises life after death, and I’m also a Christian and I believe in Jesus Christ, having been raised raised from the dead.

In those last years, hundreds of visitors of various religions–or sometimes no religion at all–arrived each week to attend his class and get a picture with Carter.

His niece, Kim Carter Fuller:

FULLER: He's standing up here, letting you know how much the love of Christ has impacted the way that he lives. And it made people feel that, okay, if the former leader of the free world can, can let Christ do that for him, then I can let him do it for me.

Carter also spent his post-presidency years on global humanitarian efforts. In 1982 he and Rosalynn founded the Carter Center in Atlanta to help resolve conflicts and work for human rights worldwide. The Center’s work has helped to nearly eradicate guinea worm disease. The Carters also became heavily involved with Habitat for Humanity.

In 1999, the Carters received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian and diplomatic work.

CARTER: Ladies and gentlemen, war may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

Carter survived melanoma and a series of falls before entering Hospice care in early 2023. His wife Rosalynn died last November. Carter is survived by four adult children and more than 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: we continue our review of the year coming to a close. WORLD’s Leah Savas will analyze the biggest pro-life news of 2024, and we remember some other notables who died this year.

That and more tomorrow.

And remember, Monday and Tuesday, today and tomorrow to get your gift in before the end of the year, and we still need it. Everything helps. Please give at WNG.org/YearEndGift

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven.” —Psalms 148:13.

Go now in grace and peace.

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